The Stampede tradition of honouring the families tied to the land continued as three local farming operations were honoured by the Bank of Montreal.
    The Calgary Stampede BMO Farm Families were honoured on Monday morning at the Calgary Stampede. The Honourable Verlyn Olson, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Bob Thompson, president and chairman of the Calgary Stampede, Vern Kimball, chief executive officer of the Calgary Stampede, and Mike Darling, BMO vice-president of the Southern Alberta commercial district, awarded  16 Alberta families.
    Local operations that received the award include Bertsch Custom Farms in Kneehill County, run by the family of Neil Bertsch, Dalbey Farm of Wheatland, operated by the family of Olav and Rita Pallesen, and Windmill Lane Farm of Starland County, owned by  the family of Craig Russell.
    Farm Families are selected by the Alberta Agricultural Service Board on their contribution to the community and farming expertise.
    According to a release, these awards “recognize farm families who take an innovative approach to growing their business, demonstrate a commitment to traditional western values and follow sustainable production practices.”
    The Bank of Montreal has been the banker to the Calgary Exhibition since 1899.

The Bertsch family was recognized as a BMO farm Family for Kneehill County at the Calgary Stampede.

Bertsch Custom Farms
    Much can change in a hundred years. Farming practices, for example. On the other hand, commitment, dedication, and farm family surnames can stand the test of time.
    In 1913, an American named Jacob Bertsch came to the Carbon area from South Dakota to homestead. Today, the name Bertsch is still found on farms in the area and the family of Neil Bertsch, Jacob’s great-grandson, is the 2013 BMO Farm Family of the Year representing Kneehill County.
    All of Jacob’s seven sons helped to purchase a half section, including Neil’s grandfather, Robert. When Robert died in 1953, his teenage son Adam, with the help of his uncles, continued on, eventually moving to a farm northwest of Hesketh.
    Usually the family ran a mixed operation of crops and livestock, but that changed in 2009. As the crop side of the farm grew, there was less and less time for cattle,
    Neil explains, “the pasture out here is coulee, so you have to fence up and down - all of it by hand,” he says.
    Today, Bertsch Custom Farms Ltd. has 4,500 acres under cultivation, plus another 1,000 that is entirely managed for a neighbour, rotating canola, wheat, barley and peas. In addition, Neil does custom swathing on another 7,500 acres of canola.
    “Between our canola and the other guys’, we did 10,000 acres last year. That’s a little bit insane,” he admits. “I’m trying to back out of that a bit.”
    The custom work started, he says, because they had equipment sitting around idle.
    “We put an ad in the paper and I couldn’t believe the calls we got. Now we farm most of the land we were custom-farming,” Neil states. “It helped our farm grow.”
    “We’re almost classed as desert here,” he continues.
    The farm uses a no-till air drill, and the Bertsch family is trying to maximize the efficiency of their fertilizer application. GPS has become a very important tool, Neil admits, despite his initial reluctance to acquire the technology.
    “My son wanted me to try GPS, so I put it in the sprayer,” he says. “Now I think we have five or six of them.” With auto steer, Neil jokes, “nobody wants to drive anything anymore.”
    That may be just as well. Using an old swather without GPS, he says, “I swathed a piece of land and hand-drove the thing. It seems to me there were 94 passes on that field - a quarter section of land. If I had GPS, there were only 88 passes. At the end of 10,000 acres, that’s a lot of miles!”
    Neil and his wife Lonna are the farm principals right now. Adam still likes to keep his hand in, too. Neil and Lonna’s daughter Kelisha is enrolled in a farm management program at Olds College and helps fulltime on the farm. Son Chance decided, after some time on the farm, to take a job trucking.
    Kaitlyn, the other Bertsch daughter, is married and lives in Edmonton.

    Now that the Town of Drumheller has largely recovered from the recent flooding crisis, Town staff are busy making the final preparations to move later this summer.
    The Drumheller Mail was treated to an inside look of the new Town Hall. All that is left to do are a few finishing touches and to move everything from the current Town Hall to the new one, located in the Drumheller Civic Centre.
    “It could be later this month, but we’re hoping for sooner than that,” said Mayor Terry Yemen. “They’ve done the testing on the alarms, so we have a permit to occupy the building. There’s just some finishing up with the contractor to do and building some furniture. It’s a little overdue, but it’s time to get in there.”
    Everything inside the Civic Centre has been renovated. The room that used to house the Drumheller Public Library is now the Town Hall reception/front desk and Corporate Services area.
    Upstairs, in what used to be the large meeting room, now lies the Council chambers.
    In addition, the upper floor, in a restricted part of the building, houses offices for the Town Administration. The Mayor’s office is located next to a large community meeting room and is accessible to the public.
    Earlier this year, projections were the moving process would begin in June. Minor delays and the flood have pushed back the timetable.
    “We were right in the middle of moving. Town Hall was filled with boxes, but then we had the flood in the meantime, so everything sat in limbo,” said Yemen. “Now, we’re finally able to move things over.”

Mayor Terry Yemen sits at the new Council table in the Drumheller Civic Centre. The Civic Centre has been slowly transformed since the fall of 2012 to be the new home of the Drumheller Town Hall. It is expected the move from the current hall to new will take place later this month.

    The move of Town Hall to the Civic Centre was confirmed early in 2012. The desire was to have the municipal centre of Drumheller in a central location and modernized. Given the age of the current Town Hall, it was felt renovating it was not practical as it would have taken considerable work and money to bring the building up to current building codes.
    The cost of the renovation was initially estimated to be $2 million. Of that, $1.5 million was covered by provincial grants.
    The Civic Center was gutted last fall and construction has proceeded ever since to create a new space for the heart of the Town’s governance.
    A grand opening is tentatively planned for September.